We need to have that dynamic economy return. You do that by growing the economy and giving people a hand up, not a hand out. Teach a man how to fish, he can feed himself for a life. Don't simply feed fish.

Don't feed fish? "What does that even mean?" asked Al Sharpton on MSNBC.

Werth tried to ask Bernanke questions about QE3, the latest round of economic stimulus, but Bernanke preferred balls and strikes, Werth says: "He wasn't talking about that economic stuff. So we talked about baseball, and it was a hoot."

The Lifeline program specifically was started in 1984 under President Reagan and was expanded in 1996 under President Clinton to allow qualifying households to choose to apply the benefit to either a landline or a cell phone. So no, it's not an Obama handout.

The billionaire George Soros is committing $1m to Priorities USA Action, the “super Pac” supporting President Obama, two people with knowledge of the decision said Thursday, a significant donation that could help spur further contributions to the group in the closing weeks of the election.

How did Mecklenburg County know the race of people requesting absentee ballots?

That's a good question. When you register to vote in Mecklenberg County, the form you fill in includes questions on race and ethnicity. You can see a link to a pdf of the registration form here.

Then, when the county's election board releases statistics of absentee ballot requests, it includes the racial and ethnic breakdown (because it's all in the database). Here's the information it provides.

As to why it does it, that I don't know. But it also breaks down the numbers by age and sex. And yes, it includes names and addresses.

Republican US Senate candidate Todd Akin said his Democratic opponent, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, was more “ladylike” in her campaign six years ago than when she debated him on September 21.

When she defeated Republican Senator Jim Talent in 2006, McCaskill “had a confidence and was very much more sort of ladylike,” Akin told reporters today at a press conference in Jefferson City on the third day of a statewide bus tour.

This is still the 21st century, right? Does Todd Akin actually not want any women to vote for him?

The advantage Obama has enjoyed since the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden by US special forces is eroding, according to the poll, conducted September 21-24. In the wake of violent protests in Libya that left the US ambassador and three other Americans dead, likely voters, by 48% to 42%, say Romney would be tougher on terrorism than would the president.

On the other hand, it doesn't appear to be an issue of much concern to voters: "Asked to identify the most important issue facing the electorate, just 6% pick the situation in the Middle East and 3% choose terrorism, while 43% say unemployment and jobs.”

Dukakis said the issue was not ideology but competence because he was trying to avoid getting pinned with the label “liberal.” In Romney’s case, the issue is framed less as a question of his opponent’s alleged incompetence than it is his own superb omnicompetence.

As a sidenote: the best part of Kinsley's piece is his description of a management consultant:

A management consultant is someone who parachutes into some crisis situation, or even some perfectly normal situation, and tells people twice his age with 10 times his expertise what they’re doing wrong.

On the poll-ranoia being exhibited by Republicans, New York magazine's Jonathan Chait is unusually sympathetic to their complaints about the polls skewing coverage of the election:

It may not be original to point this out, but it’s true - campaign coverage devotes far too much attention to which candidate is winning, and far too little time to conveying information that voters might use to make up their minds. Instead, the horse race coverage takes the place of the substantive coverage, and the candidate with the lead appears decisive and competent, and the trailing candidate faintly ridiculous.

Can't argue with that. Now where's a photo of Mitt Romney looking silly?

With Colorado, Delaware and Nevada nagging reminders of how a Tea Party candidate can botch a Senate race - and a potential majority - Indiana Republicans remain in danger of losing a Senate seat, as nominee Richard Mourdock trails Democrat Joe Donnelly 40 to 38% in the latest Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll. Libertarian nominee Andrew Horning is pulling 7%, perhaps bleeding away crucial support for the candidate who upset US Senator Dick Lugar in the May primary.

So there's two things in play here. One is the unseating of Dick Lugar in the GOP primary has left lasting scars. Lugar still won't campaign for Mourdock. The other is the libertarian candidate Andrew Horning.

The Guardian's own polling guru Harry Enten gets stuck into the issue of the polls and accusations of bias, which is currently reaching the heights of paranoia within Republican circles. Harry writes:

Indeed, it is a ridiculous charge that the media purposely skews polls. If so, they have persuaded many Republicans to get in on the act. Polls from Fox News – an organization few would accuse of a pro-Democratic bias – have shown poor results for Romney. (Its polling is also partially run by the openly Republican Daron Shaw.) The NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll is part run by Bill McInturff: a Republican, John McCain's own pollster, and professional partner to Mitt Romney's pollster. The GWU/Battleground poll has Republican pollster Ed Goeas on board. The list goes on.

This non-controversy reminds me of the scene in Citizen Kane in which Kane's newspaper prepares different front pages depending on the result of the election Kane is running in.

There was excitement this morning at the announcement of a downward revision in second quarter GDP output, scaling its measure of US growth back from a earlier estimate of 1.7% to 1.3%.

Obviously it's not a good figure but in economic terms it's backward-looking: the effects of weak growth between April and June have already worked through via unemployment and so on, so there's no new-news from these figures, so to speak, and no obvious political impact to come. (Other than supplying the Romney campaign a talking point that it has already been making with alacrity.)

Far more interesting, from a forward-looking point of view, was the fall in US durable goods orders last month. Durable goods are important for capital formation. So a fall in durable goods orders is likely to be a drag on employment and output for the coming months.

The collapse was driven in large part by by declining transportation orders, particularly for aircraft. Transportation equipment orders fell 34.9% following four consecutive monthly increases. Orders for civilian aircraft plunged. Boeing received 260 orders in July and just one in August. Australia's Qantas airline cancelled an $8.5bn order with Boeing in August, triggering a net decline in new orders for the month. Motor-vehicle and parts orders dropped 10.9%. Outside of transportation, August orders slid 1.6%.

But not all the news was bad. Non-defence capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched barometer of business spending plans, rose 1.1% after falling for the previous two months. The increase was above economists' expectations for 0.5% gain.

Larry Sabato, the election sage of the University of Virginia, has just issued his latest Crystal Ball presidential ratings - and has shifted five key swing states from "toss up" to lean Democratic: Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin:

Our changes push Obama over the magic 270 mark, but we are not calling the race.... caution is always in order with almost six weeks to go, yet President Obama clearly leads at the moment.

According to Sabato's Crystal Ball, only Colorado, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Florida are still toss-ups.

The Obama campaign is clicking on all cylinders, consistent, smoothly choreographed and slickly produced; Romney's appearances are a jumble, his tone of voice pleading to the point of desperation, his speech constantly improvised from a Frankenstinian array of spare messaging parts, never quite gelling into a focused whole. Obama's crowds are a Bieber-like fan-throng; Romney's are only passionately angry. A visitor from another planet who didn't speak a word of any human language could tell which one was up and which was down.

At Mitt Romney's rally in Springfied, in northern Virginia, Ewen MacAskill reports that the Republican candidate is pitching his speech at the military:

Romney is spending a lot of time talking about veterans at his campaign stop. Northern Virginia is mainly Democratic territory but US military veterans in the state may offer more fertile ground for Romney than some of the other demographics in the region.

Romney spoke about marrying couples on overseas posting while he was governor of Massachusetts, and other military-orientated tales.

The main thrust of Romney's speech has been to oppose military spending cuts – and that wins him his first big round of applause.

Some actual policy news, as opposed to horserace card-marking: the New York Times reports that Mitt Romney's advisors want him to lift Barack Obama's executive order banning torture should he win the presidency in November:

Mr Romney’s advisers have privately urged him to “rescind and replace President Obama’s executive order” and permit secret “enhanced interrogation techniques against high-value detainees that are safe, legal and effective in generating intelligence to save American lives,” according to an internal Romney campaign memorandum.

The NYT has published online a copy of the five-page policy paper, entitled Interrogation Techniques. It says the memo is "a near-final draft circulated in September 2011 among the Romney campaign’s national security law subcommittee for any further comments before it was to be submitted to Mr Romney."

In the past Romney has said he doesn't agree that waterboarding counts as torture, so that tells us something about his way of thinking.

With Mitt Romney campaigning in Virginia, the Guardian's Ewen MacAskill is at the scene of his rally today in Springfield, where he talks to Romney supporters:

About 200, mainly vets, crammed into the American Legion in Springfield, Virginia. Mackie Christenson (65), from Leesburg, Virgina, said she believes Romney can still win in spite of the polls.

"Reagan was down 9% at this point against Carter," she said. She has been out canvassing for Romney. She is not upset that Romney has changed tack over the last few days, and become more positive about Barack Obama, saying he cares about America. Romney is "basically a nice person. Politics is a blood sport and he is swimming with sharks.".

She predicted Romney will win the debate next week because he will have a chance to call out Obama on what she said were repeated lies about contraception (Republicans are not opposed to contraception, she said), the killing of ambassador Chris Stevens and other issues.

Christenson is especially annoyed that so many women are backing Obama: "Women make up 75% of the unemployed. They are having to cope with high food prices. And yet they are for Obama because they think he is cute."

And here's a surprise: it seems that No 10 Downing St is denying Charlie Brooks's claim that David Cameron refused to take a phone call from Barack Obama because he was too busy playing tennis with Brooks.

British prime minister David Cameron was on David Letterman last night, and was gently mocked as is Letterman's wont. Via Buzzfeed, however, we learn of a claim that Cameron once refused to take a call from Barack Obama because he was playing tennis:

Cameron, a friend and old Etonian classmate of the prime minister's told the British press, once put off a call from Obama to finish a tennis match.

'I played tennis with him at Chequers one day,' Charlie Brooks told the Racing Post. 'I won the first set easily, then he won the second set, and then someone came up to him and said, "Er ... Mr Obama is on the phone for you, prime minister." He said: "I think we've got time for a third set – tell Mr Obama I'll ring him back." He obviously thought he had me on the ropes, and I beat him two sets to one.'

Chequers is the British prime minister's country house: imagine Camp David crossed with Downton Abbey. It's nothing like that.

And who is this Charlie Brooks, you ask? This guy. There are various jokes I'd like to make here but for legal reasons and so forth. Like how he knew who was on the phone, ha ha, no just kidding.

David Cameron (left) talks with David Letterman. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

We don't have to wait six weeks for the elections. Election day is already here.

'You can start voting in six days,' President Obama told a crowd of college students first at Bowling Green State University and then at Kent State in Ohio on Wednesday, urging his backers to get out and vote early.

'I need you to start voting six days from now on 2 October,' the president said as he wrapped up his first speech of the day in the Buckeye state.

Jamie also prepares to dive down the rabbit hole regarding early voter statistics:

Some states put no data on the internet about their early voting, others have all kinds of .csv files that would make fans of spreadsheets go nuts – North Carolina is one prime example – where you can find out very interesting details.

In Mecklenburg County around Charlotte, how about these details on who has requested absentee ballots:

Iowa is one of more than 30 states, along with the District of Columbia, that allow early voting. South Dakota, Idaho and Vermont have already begun in-person voting.

But Iowa is the first battleground state to head to the polls. It's key, despite its relatively paltry six electoral votes, because the candidates have been running virtually neck-and-neck. Recent polls, however, show a bit of growth in President Obama's numbers.

Data from the Iowa secretary of state's office paints a mixed portrait of where Iowans stand on the candidates as voting begins. Republicans have about an 18,000-vote lead in registration among active voters.

There may still be 40 days to go until polls open on election day but with in-person early voting underway in the swing state of Iowa, the 2012 presidential race is already into the home straight.

With as many as 30% of voters likely to take the chance to fill in their ballots before 6 November, both the Obama and Romney campaigns are having to change their tactics to appeal to early birds in Iowa, Maine and several other states that allow in-person voting.

As well, some 30 states have either begun or are in the process of issuing absentee ballots.

In response, the Obama campaign has started running this new ad, offering the sort of closing arguments that would typically been seen in the final week or so of an election.

Yesterday both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama held campaign rallies and appearances in the crucial state of Ohio, and today it is the equally crucial swing state of Virginia that gets both candidates' attention.

Meanwhile, new economic data continues to show that the US economy remains sluggish – reinforcing the decision by the Federal reserve to conduct another, unlimited round of quantitative easing to try and revive growth.